Hollywood A-listers are more comfortable than ever with cloning their voice and likeness to create a new stream of income, despite the threat of viewer backlash to artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
Sunny Hostin of the popular daily talk show \u201cThe View\u201d has licensed her image and likeness to AI production studio Fountain 0, which will make film adaptations of her novels<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be able to bring my novels to life in movie and TV form, and actually have my image inserted in the productions, so that audiences can relate to me through my stories beyond my role as an author, is incredibly exciting to me,\u201d Hostin said in a statement. <\/p>\n \u201cAI can give me a way to both more fully develop, and more fully immerse myself in, IP I have developed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The Overton window for acceptable AI use in Hollywood continues to widen as Hollywood actors, television hosts, and influencers embrace cloning with protections and compensation. As high-quality synthetic re-creations become cheap and accessible<\/a>, cloning has become a more desirable option for studios struggling with runaway production costs. <\/p>\n Audiences will be subject to more AI content on the big screen that\u2019s indistinguishable from real human performances. <\/p>\n Fountain 0 is the producer behind \u201cDreams of Violets,\u201d a fully AI-generated film inspired by anti-government protests in Tehran. The 75-minute drama was made with a budget of $2,000 without a cast or a crew, and was the first fully AI-generated film accepted at the Tribeca Film Festival. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are incredibly gratified that Sunny is willing to be the talent pioneer willing to step out and take advantage of this new form of creative expression,\u201d said Ash Koosha, co-founder and CEO of Fountain 0, in a release. <\/p>\n The production company will be releasing its second fully AI-generated film, \u201cOdysseus: The Fall,\u201d later this year. The film uses the likeness of many people, including the film\u2019s creator Koosha, who stars as Odysseus. <\/p>\n Fountain 0\u2019s executive chariman told CNBC<\/a> that the film is designed to ride the buzz around Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u2018\u2019The Odyssey\u201d and give people the opportunity to compare the height of human filmmaking with AI filmmaking. <\/p>\n Proponents of AI argue that it allows writers and creators to take on blockbuster-scale films without financial constraints. Many creators oppose AI because it could replace humans and was built using the unauthorized scraping of creative works used to train generative AI video and image models.<\/p>\n Online reactions to news of Hostin\u2019s cloning were fierce. <\/p>\n \u201cBasically, no film studio wants to give her the budget to turn her books into a movie with real actors, so she\u2019s resorting to AI studios,\u201d wrote one person on Reddit.<\/p>\n Hollywood has fought hard for protections from AI in the prolonged writers\u2019 and actors\u2019 strikes of 2023. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing about 160,000 actors and other performers, has been demanding informed consent, fair compensation, more control and transparency over the use of digital replicas.<\/p>\n The latest agreement<\/a>, signed in June, introduced limits on studios\u2019 use of digital replicas. The contract requires studios to notify actors before using their voices to create a replica. After a project is complete, actors must sign off and be paid the equivalent of an in-person performance if their replica is used.<\/p>\n Additionally, studios need to pay residuals to digital replicas used in reruns, and replicas cannot be used during a strike.<\/p>\n Hiring fully AI-generated characters such as Tilly Norwood<\/a>, created without hiring a human performer, is not impossible but comes with a very high threshold for use under the 2026 union contract. Producers must notify the union in advance and prove the AI character brings \u201csignificant additional value\u201d to the role.<\/p>\n Still, a fissure remains between those actors who stay morally opposed to cloning, and those who embrace this new reality. <\/p>\n